A team led by London, Ontario’s Western University has imaged a shell of “buckyball” carbon molecules in space while exploring Tc 1, a nebula hosting an aging star similar in size and composition to Earth’s sun.
While Western officials released a preliminary image on Wednesday, April 22, multiple papers describing the full scientific results are currently in preparation. These papers will focus on the nebula’s spectroscopy, potentially shedding light on how older stars shape their local environments.
The researchers also hope to eventually show more about the nature of buckyballs, which after decades of study still remain difficult molecules to interpret.
The mystery of the buckyball
The whimsical “buckyball” name, which is “buckminsterfullerene” in full, is named after architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller – essentially because scientists of the 1980s felt the hollow, soccer-ball shaped carbon molecules had a similar shape to Fuller’s geodesic domes. Buckyballs were first synthesized in 1985 and the work, led by the University of Sussex’s Harry Kroto, earned Kroto and some of his colleagues the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996.
Western University professor and observational astronomer Jan Cami led a team in 2010 that published a paper in Science showing how they were the first to find buckyballs in space, in a gas nebula known as Tc 1. The new observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), also co-led by Cami, allowed the scientists to revisit the area in much higher resolution. Most of the buckyballs are in a shell around the dying star at the heart of the nebula, JWST showed.
Why the buckyballs are arranged that way is still being explored, but in general, learning about their environment shows properties such as how carbon molecules are composed and how they alter in extreme environments, such as irradiation.
The new observations made use of JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which has filter wavelengths from 5.6 to 25.5 microns. MIRI is designed to record the “chemical fingerprint”, Western stated, of cosmic environments including items like gas motion, density and temperature.
Canada’s contributions
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA), via Honeywell, contributed two elements to JWST in exchange for observing time: a Fine-Guidance Sensor (FGS) for precision pointing and focusing, and the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) that can study objects ranging from galaxies to exoplanets.
Canada has two main teams supported by CSA – one focused on FGS/NIRISS, and a more general science group.
- The FGS/NIRISS team’s leads include René Doyon (Université de Montréal), Begoña Vila (NASA), Chris Willott (NRC-Herzberg) and Neil Rowlands (Honeywell).
- Canada’s Webb science team is led by principal investigator René Doyon (Université de Montréal) and project scientist Chris Willott (NRC-Herzberg). Researchers from several US and Canadian institutions also have involvement.
Western’s ongoing role
The way Western participated for the buckyball project was through general observations, which is one of three avenues – aside from early science releases and guaranteed-time observations – by which Canadians get access to JWST, after applying for announcements of opportunity.
Western has several active general observation programs, but the one used for the buckyballs was done under “Cycle 3” (the third chance for JWST general observations.).
“The support of the Canadian Space Agency, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and a Western University Accelerator Award has been instrumental in building and sustaining this research program,” Western officials said.
“Together,” the university added, “these investments have enabled Western to assemble a diverse team of experienced researchers and internationally recruited graduate students that has established itself as the world leader in the study of cosmic fullerenes.”
Cami, who has been highly active in past JWST cycles, was accepted to do two more forthcoming sets of observations under Cycle 5.
- Testing Fullerene Physics: A project using MIRI and the Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) to study C60-rich planetary nebulae and is another buckyball project. The co-PI is the University of Maryland’s Alexander Tielens.
- Unexpected Carbon Chemistry: A study using NIRSpec to investigate the oxygen-rich ejecta of dying stars. Co-PI’s are the University of Texas at Austin’s Harriet Dinerstein and Western’s Els Peeters.